Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown an exemplary telecommunications medium or network 30, including but not limited to one or more wireless and/or satellite telecommunications networks, for enabling two or more telecommunications devices (20, 20′) such as satellite or cellular telephone devices, to communicate with one another. However, these communications experience inherent delays. These delays may result in unsuccessful facsimile communications from one facsimile (fax) machine 10 to another facsimile machine 10′. Difficulties associated with successfully transmitting and/or receiving a facsimile message via a wireless communications network may be exacerbated when attempting to protect transmitted facsimile information, such as through encryption. A device and method for encrypting facsimile transmissions is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,691 entitled “Stand-Alone Telecommunications Security Device” issued to DiSanto, the inventor herein, the subject matter of which is incorporated herein by reference.
For example, a facsimile receiving mechanism, such as facsimile machine 10′ will typically time out if no data is received and either stored or printed within a given time interval, such as a minimum 30 second time period after the facsimile machine 10′ receiver answers an incoming call. Similarly, a transmitting facsimile mechanism, such as facsimile machine 10, will typically time out between transmission of pages if more than a minimum 30 seconds elapses before the receiving facsimile machine modem is prepared to receive another page after the end of a preceding page. This situation is considerably more likely to occur when encrypting the facsimile data, since setting up the encryption session requires some time before encryption of data is possible and the encryption/decryption processes themselves further require additional processing time associated with encrypting and/or decrypting the data.
Accordingly, it is believed to be desirable to provide a system and method that overcomes the difficulties inherent in the facsimile protocol and permits errorless communication of encrypted or clear-channel data over a wireless communications network, such as a satellite or cellular telephone network.